No More Learning

You are Sulky, and want more wine. Here, drink this! "
and he poured out another goblet full and offered it to the cripple, who
merely gazed at it, gasping for breath.

"Drink, I say! " shouted the monster, "or by the fiends-"

The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers
smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch's seat,
and, falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.

The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at
her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say--how most
becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a
syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of
the brimming goblet in her face.

The poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh,
resumed her position at the foot of the table.

There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the
falling of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. It was
interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which
seemed to come at once from every corner of the room.

"What--what--what are you making that noise for?
" demanded the king,
turning furiously to the dwarf.

The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his
intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant's face,
merely ejaculated:

"I--I? How could it have been me? "

"The sound appeared to come from without," observed one of the
courtiers. "I fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his bill
upon his cage-wires. "

"True," replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion;
"but, on the honor of a knight, I could have sworn that it was the
gritting of this vagabond's teeth. "

Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object
to any one's laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very
repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow
as much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained
another bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at
once, and with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.

"I cannot tell what was the association of idea," observed he, very
tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, "but just
after your majesty, had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her
face--just after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was
making that odd noise outside the window, there came into my mind a
capital diversion--one of my own country frolics--often enacted
among us, at our masquerades: but here it will be new altogether.
Unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight persons and-"

"Here we are! " cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the
coincidence; "eight to a fraction--I and my seven ministers. Come! what
is the diversion? "

"We call it," replied the cripple, "the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs,
and it really is excellent sport if well enacted. "

"We will enact it," remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering
his eyelids.